WCU sponsors dulcimer workshop at Junaluska

The sixth annual Mountain Dulcimer Winter Weekend, sponsored by Western Carolina University, will be held Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 6-9, at the Terrace Hotel at the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center.

Longtime music educators Elaine and Larry Conger will host this year’s event, which includes classes in mountain dulcimer taught by Anne Lough, Dave Haas and Joe Collins; bowed dulcimer with Ken Bloom; and — new this year — hammered dulcimer with Lough and Ruth Smith. Instruction also will be offered in waltzes for dulcimer, Native American flute music, fast Celtic tunes, hymns and more. The Congers, Miller, Marsha Harris and Will Peebles, director of the School of Music at WCU, will teach elective classes.

Registration for the event is now open at dulcimer.wcu.edu. Tuition for playing participants is $149 and includes all activities. A nonparticipant rate of $40 also is available, which includes attendance at jams, nightly events and Sunday morning singing. Reservations for accommodations should be made separately through the Terrace Hotel at 800.222.4930 or 828.452.2881. Some meals are included with accommodations.

For more information, contact Bobby Hensley of WCU’s Division of Educational Outreach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 828.227.7397.

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…